Note: The below story was written by Kelsi Loos. She is currently the bass player in the Baltimore band Heavenly Nobodies. You can check them out on Facebook here, and if you are so inclined, you can also check out all the great things Kelsi has going on through her Twitter account here.
The Get Right Band, a rock band with Middletown roots, will debut its new album at Alive@Five tonight, a downtown happy hour along Carroll Creek. The band, based in North Carolina, approached the record, “Bass Treble Angel Devil,” with high ambitions.
“We really wanted to do something bold. We really wanted to do something big and adventurous,” singer and guitarist Silas Durocher said.
The record is a blending of many different styles, from rock, blues, funk and reggae.
“We really don’t like to be limited by genres,” Durocher said. “We really just kind of follow the muse.”
Bass player and vocalist Jesse Gentry summed up the theme of the album saying it’s about living every day like it’s your last. The goal of the album, recorded at the Eagle Room in Weaverville, North Carolina, was to translate the band’s high-energy live sound into a recording.
The Get Right Band spends a lot of time on the road, Durocher said. For some bands, recording in the studio after working the songs out in a live environment can be challenging.
“It’s a really different artform in the studio,” Durocher said.
The band wanted to record as many tracks live, as a group, as possible. That way, the singer said, the sound would center around the trio and be true to the band.
However, there is some studio magic on some songs. The lead off song, “Satisfied Man,” was recorded using a drum loop as well as live drum tracks to make for a bigger sound.
“We wanted to make that sound huge,” Durocher said.
The band frequently plays their songs in different styles live, Gentry said. It was a bit of a challenge to pick the version they wanted to release, but recording a record was a good way for it to settle on a final version for each song and cut back on jams, to focus the songs.
“The album was a great way for us to just trim the fat,” Gentry said.
The record release show will be something of a homecoming for Gentry and Durocher. The two met at Middletown High School (Durocher in the class of 2003, Jesse graduating in ’02) and have played music together off and on since then. Last winter, drummer JC Mears joined the Middletown natives.
While the band members have been living outside of Maryland for over a decade, they still have family and friends in Frederick and enjoy the chance to come back, timing performances for when they will be able to see the most family and friends.
“We come back and we play a couple times a year, at Cafe Nola mostly,” Durocher said. “It really is a homecoming.”
Gentry was pleased to see a cultural growth in Frederick since his childhood, he said, and he was looking forward to experiencing the Alive@Five concert on Carroll Creek.
“We love coming back to Frederick,” he said, “Now I feel like it’s really been revitalized. … Frederick has blossomed.”
Check out The Get Right Band at 5 p.m. Thursday night along Carroll Creek as part of this week’s Alive@Five. They’ll be releasing their latest set, Bass Treble Angel Devil. And no, you won’t want to miss it.
